En Passant

  The problem is not who is selling us the sh*t sandwich; the problem is the sh*t sandwich.

This ‘did they or didn’t they’ sideshow is about covering up the political sins of the conservatives and sustaining their class war mantra of cutting spending on the poor and working class and attacking our wages as the way to save the economy, by which they mean profits.

After Tony Abbott’s Margaret Thatcher memorial lecture to the Europeans on how to better abuse asylum seekers, and the wonderful response he got from the thoroughly reactionary UKIP and its leader, Nigel Farage, words are beyond me. This cartoon captures it perfectly.

With news that Tony Abbott has offered himself to the international talk circuit as one of the world’s greatest minds (minuses, surely) for only US$40,000, or about A$55,000, I think I will put my hand up for some gigs at half that price. But hurry, places are filling fast. Book John now.

Just as changing Liberal leaders won’t change the fundamentals, neither will dumping Shorten for a fake leftie like Albanese or Plibersek, or promoting a smooth right-winger like Tony Burke.

There is a message for activists and socialists in the fall of Abbott. It wasn’t Labor who defeated him. It certainly wasn’t Shorten. It was those Aboriginal, education, refugee, Medicare, feminist and other activists, the gay community and their supporters, the teachers, nurses, public servants, wharfies, building workers etc etc etc actually fighting against Abbott and his rotten policies and sending a message to the wider community about Abbott’s rotten policies and the fact you could reject them and resist them.

It is the same message we need to develop in fighting Turnbull’s neoliberalism and that of whoever is leading Labor at the next election. On to the streets to fight for equal love, against the closure of remote communities, against climate change, to free the refugees, for women’s liberation and so on. Close down our workplaces to defend jobs and wages.

Here is photographic ‘evidence’ of my view that the problem isn’t who is selling us the shit sandwich. The problem is the shit sandwich.

Tony Abbott claims we are number one per capita in taking in refugees. We are not. We are not number one but number 27 per capita. This is a good analysis with, you know, FACTS, not Tony Abbott lies, about Australia’s pathetic response to refugees. It is from the Refugee Council of Australia.

Combatting domestic violence at a minimum requires a challenge to the dominance of the family and ultimately its overthrow. Tony Abbott will do nothing that might undermine the ideology of the family let alone overthrow it. Nor will he address the ‘less than men’ messages about women that flow from the paramountcy of the family unit in capitalist society. Instead he has cut funding for domestic violence services.

There is a continuity in our politics. We have two parties of neoliberalism who argue over the detail. The first and arguably most successful governments of neoliberalism (most successful from the point of view of the bosses) were the Hawke and Keating Labor governments. Hawke and Keating and their neoliberalism made Howard acceptable. Rudd and Gillard and their neoliberalism made Abbott acceptable. Shorten and co and their neoliberalism are making Abbott potentially re-electable.

Here is a  20 second video of Tony Abbott, a grog monster (his words) and Australia’s Prime Minister,  doing one thing well – being a  grog monster. Says it all about Australia today. The glass is fully empty.